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It irks me that CN doesn't show much anime anymore. And Adult Swim's anime block is confined to Saturday.
But at least the stuff on it is generally good; Code Geass just plain rocks. And I'm seriously addicted to Death Note; I've also read up through volume 9 of the manga. It's probably one of the better anime/manga series out there.

I'm not much into Bleach, but it's a good show. I watch it occasionally.
What really ticks me off, though, is that InuYasha only comes on at 5 in the morning at the end of the Saturday anime block. I know it got kinda tedious near the end, but it's such a big part of my late childhood and it made a huge contribution towards really pulling me into anime. It remains one of my favourite anime, and I think they should show it more often and at a better time.

re: the Gundam discussion. Universal Century timeline is the shit. It is the standard to which all other Gundam is compared. I liked Wing, because it was the first Gundam series shown in the US and it was a HUGE part of my childhood. But it's terrible; the dialogue is awful, the character development is atrocious, and the story events are way, way too quick. The Gundam pilots were, also, far too powerful. The only thing I liked about it was Zechs, Treize, and the semi-realistic MS designs.
I loved SEED's premise, because it was an attempt to re-tell the original story in modern terms, with updated science, and more relevant issues. But, I agree that the animation was mediocre, the characters weren't that well-developed until SEED Destiny, the suit designs were bad copies of older ones. Even so, I like it. SEED Destiny, however, wasn't even as good as SEED; and SEED original was mediocre, as I said.
Gundam 00, however, is great. Its amazing; the voice acting and characterisation is perfect, the suit designs are some of the most realistic I've ever seen. It goes in a completely different direction from the other series; rather than trying to blithely imitate the original, it makes it own mark. IMO, it's one of the better ones out there.

This is for any fan of Fullmetal Alchemist. Do you believe in the theory of equivalent exchange?

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I would go with "no." If a person works very hard, sacrifices much, devotes himself to a calling and generally incurs huge costs in pursuit of a goal, that person can still be randomly hit by a bus and lose the benefits of all that experience...without compensation.

Worse, unlike what the show suggests, there are in fact prodigies whose ability in a given field comes from a pure innate talent without any need for them to work hard, sacrifice, devote themselves or incur costs, and they can and often do routinely outshine those who put in the effort.

In short all the pain and tribulation one suffers are not recompensed by the universe, because the universe is not keeping track of one's pain and suffering. In the same same way, the good things that come to you do not create a cosmic "debt" that needs to be paid off, nor is good fortune evidence of prior hard work or suffering that is not being rewarded.

Life often seems to reward the evil and the lazy and seems to punish the good and the hard working. In fact Life is doing neither. It's is just a series of stuff that happens to occur without any of the "accounting" that equivalent exchange and our intuitive sense of fairness suggests should exist.

I would go with "no." If a person works very hard, sacrifices much, devotes himself to a calling and generally incurs huge costs in pursuit of a goal, that person can still be randomly hit by a bus and lose the benefits of all that experience...without compensation.

Worse, unlike what the show suggests, there are in fact prodigies whose ability in a given field comes from a pure innate talent without any need for them to work hard, sacrifice, devote themselves or incur costs, and they can and often do routinely outshine those who put in the effort.

In short all the pain and tribulation one suffers are not recompensed by the universe, because the universe is not keeping track of one's pain and suffering. In the same same way, the good things that come to you do not create a cosmic "debt" that needs to be paid off, nor is good fortune evidence of prior hard work or suffering that is not being rewarded.

Life often seems to reward the evil and the lazy and seems to punish the good and the hard working. In fact Life is doing neither. It's is just a series of stuff that happens to occur without any of the "accounting" that equivalent exchange and our intuitive sense of fairness suggests should exist.

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You know I don't mean it like that. I mean on a deeper level. I don't mean something like I got this for free, ha ha ha, I'm magical. Or, I'm a lazy ass and I just won a kagizillion dollars, now bow down to me. I somewhat believe in this law. The equivalent exchange of humans living is...the same amount of humans dying. And as long as we have a lifespan, we will live and die. So for every human that lives, each one of those humans will die. That's because I doubt that anyone of us are immortal. Same goes for all living things, the price for them living is them dying. There are a lot of things in between but still. Can someone back me up on this? I know this sounds kinda like a load of bull.

The equivalent exchange of humans living is...the same amount of humans dying.

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Not true: there was a standard "joke" doing the rounds in the late 70s/ early 80s based on statistics.
In essence it said that for every person alive on the Earth at that time there had been 10 previous humans since the start of the human race (due to population increase).
The joke (very geeky - but it was part of my statistics course) being that 1 out of every 11 people ever born hadn't died.
And with the increasing population that figure is going to rise, especially if we ever get off the Earth and spread out.
So no, there isn't an equivalent exchange.

Not true: there was a standard "joke" doing the rounds in the late 70s/ early 80s based on statistics.
In essence it said that for every person alive on the Earth at that time there had been 10 previous humans since the start of the human race (due to population increase).
The joke (very geeky - but it was part of my statistics course) being that 1 out of every 11 people ever born hadn't died.
And with the increasing population that figure is going to rise, especially if we ever get off the Earth and spread out.
So no, there isn't an equivalent exchange.

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I meant that there will eventually be the same number of humans dying because inevitably, all the humans will die. There are a lot of variables to juggle around though.

You know I don't mean it like that. I mean on a deeper level. I don't mean something like I got this for free, ha ha ha, I'm magical. Or, I'm a lazy ass and I just won a kagizillion dollars, now bow down to me. I somewhat believe in this law. The equivalent exchange of humans living is...the same amount of humans dying. And as long as we have a lifespan, we will live and die. So for every human that lives, each one of those humans will die. That's because I doubt that anyone of us are immortal. Same goes for all living things, the price for them living is them dying. There are a lot of things in between but still. Can someone back me up on this? I know this sounds kinda like a load of bull.

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I thought it meant that you couldn't make something if the components to make it weren't there. I didn't watch the entire show (so I'm probably wrong), but I thought the reason human alchemy didn't work was because they could get all of the components that make up the human body, but never had anything to make the soul with.

I thought it meant that you couldn't make something if the components to make it weren't there. I didn't watch the entire show (so I'm probably wrong), but I thought the reason human alchemy didn't work was because they could get all of the components that make up the human body, but never had anything to make the soul with.

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Ya, that's right. But it was still pretty weird why they didn't get their mom back anyway. I mean, they gave up all the ingredients needed for a human, plus Al, and plus Ed's leg. I think it would've been enough. The weirdest part is, even though they didn't get their mom back after all that, all it took was Ed's arm to get back Al's soul.

The equivalent exchange of humans living is...the same amount of humans dying. And as long as we have a lifespan, we will live and die. So for every human that lives, each one of those humans will die. That's because I doubt that anyone of us are immortal. Same goes for all living things, the price for them living is them dying.

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Some day, though it is inevitable that all humans will be dead, throughout the universe. It's a mathematical truth and there's nothing we can do about it. Even now, there are more dead people (i.e. people who used to be alive) than are presently alive. So for each person born today, between 6 and 20 deaths have previously occurred (with the range being because we can only guess at the number of people alive through certain parts of human history).

It is true that we all die, but death is not the "cost" of living. If I lend you my Full Metal Alchemist DVDs, and you later return them, that does not negate the fact that I did you a favor by lending them to you. The period where you had them was one of positive value for you, and the period after you returned them was simply the return of the status quo...but value was created in the meantime. In the same way if you are not alive, then born, then live and later not alive any more, thst's the return of the status quo and does not negate the value (or cost) of your having lived while you did. (I say "or cost" because some people's lives may be filled with suffering, so they may well die knowing that the agony of their lives was not at all worth it.)

I can appreciate that you disagree with me on this (and in no sense can I say that you are "wrong" and I am "right"), but I would add that we do clearly disagree.

Ya, that's right. But it was still pretty weird why they didn't get their mom back anyway. I mean, they gave up all the ingredients needed for a human, plus Al, and plus Ed's leg. I think it would've been enough. The weirdest part is, even though they didn't get their mom back after all that, all it took was Ed's arm to get back Al's soul.

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According to the later episodes, they were also ignoring the energy expended. Every time they used alchemy, they were siphoning energy form the other side (our side) of the gate, and the only way to generate it was to kill people on the other side, hence our massive wars here in the real world.

As for getting Al's soul back, the reason was that it had not passed on. It was the equivalent of of reviving someone from the dead on the operating table, which is not as big a deal as reviving someone from the dead months and years after the fact. Even Hohenheim of Light failed at that when he tried to bring his own son back. As did Teacher.

Poetically speaking, it seems to me that a human soul should cost more than an arm and a body, since the soul is the immortal element. Besides, the brothers gave up on that goal of getting their mother back after they failed. They learned that that was not a realistic goal within the confines of alchemy. All Ed wanted was to restore Al's body, which still took thousands of lives and the sacrifice of separating them to pull off. As the show describes things, it would not surprise me if the deaths of millions of people were not sacrifice enough to restore a long dead soul.

I've seen most of the animé talked about here. Has anyone seen Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space? I've had a look around for it but all I can find is streams or rar file d/ls. I'm only interested in buying it though thanks.

I've seen most of the animé talked about here. Has anyone seen Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space? I've had a look around for it but all I can find is streams or rar file d/ls. I'm only interested in buying it though thanks.